LifeCIL aiding jail detainees

Wednesday

May 22, 2013 at 1:48 PMMay 22, 2013 at 1:50 PM

Cynthia Grau

The detainees at the Livingston County Jail are able to receive more rehabilitative services, thanks to a partnership between Sheriff Martin Meredith and the Life Center for Independent Living.“Rehabilitation is about the most important thing we have here because we don’t want reoccurrences. We want to make it so Livingston County is better,” Meredith explained. “The whole thing with rehabilitation is that we want to make sure they have the skills to operate in society because we don’t want them here (at the jail). If we’re going to have people in the jail, we want them to have the most knowledge available when they leave here and that’s what our goal is.”LifeCIL provides services to people with any disability, whether it’s hearing or vision loss, mental illness, developmental disabilities and physical disabilities. Veterans are even assisted at the center.Jill Doran, associate director at LifeCIL, explained the assistance offered includes independent living skills training, information, referrals to other agencies, information about disabilities, help with learning advocacy skills and how to advocate in the community.“We also provide what we feel is the most important part of our core service, peer mentoring, where we are made up of people with disabilities ourselves, so we have been there and done that and we help other people through different processes,” Doran said.She said that family members and the community as a whole can also be assisted, mainly with disability awareness.“The way we view it is we’re also helping the detainees as far as maybe some of them may not have disabilities and we’re educating them so that when they do leave, they may have a family member with a disability and can be more sensitive,” she said. “We want them to be educated. If you touch one person, they can touch another and it goes on and on. It’s an education for them as a person and it’s community awareness.”Meredith said that, along with the LifeCIL program, the jail also offers Alcoholics Anonymous, chaplain services, services with the Institute for Human Resources and a general education degree program.“We’re a resource for IHR,” said Doran. “We are not counselors and we never say that we are. We offer support to help people learn themselves, how better to navigate the system or how better to live independently.”The center doesn’t charge for its services and is funded by state and federal grants, United Way and the Floyd A. and Alta J. Byrne Trust, as well as the Fairbury Community Fund and the Louise Tolan Cox Estate.“It’s local money helping to pay for local services to help keep our office open and provide the services that are needed and they (the donors) recognize that it’s different than other services,” Doran pointed out.LifeCIL has been in Pontiac since 2003 and is located at 318 W. Madison St. The main office is at 2201 Eastland Dr., Ste. 1, Bloomington. The Pontiac office can be reached at 815-844-1148.